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Link: Can you guess who is actually obsessed with weight here?

What gets me is Al Roker is obviously a fatpologist. After all, dude was fluffy for a LONG TIME. And now he’s mister “keeping it off” and from what I remember, he’s somewhat preachy about weight/fitness/whatever now that he’s fully “recovered” from the horrible disease that is fat.

In other words, he doesn’t have any right to question anyone else’s weight, or their reasons for not giving it out. He should remember what it was like to be in the “you weigh how much?” category.

Those who lose weight then give grief to others are, in a lot of ways, the worst offenders in terms of stigma.

To literally have a person not just ask you, but then suggest that you are “obsessing” over your own weight by not revealing it to me suggests that he is the one that is obsessed, and I suspect the basis of his obsession is still, partially, self-loathing.

That is what I see when I am preached at by the fat-reformed: I see insecurity white-washed with a superior attitude, regret masked with know-it-all “wisdom” and, worst of all, this attitude that I NOW HAVE TO REDEEM MYSELF… mostly because I’m being told to do so by a person who supposedly did, and yet doesn’t seem to be any happier or more successful. Being fat-reformed is like being a born-again Christian: those who find themselves in the position to be saved don’t necessarily forget all the bad shit they did when they weren’t saved. The memories live on, the self-blame lives on… but gets turned outward on anyone who reminds the born-again of who she or he once was.

It’s not really religious salvation or redemption, or a true belief in Jesus. It’s deep, corrupting regret, and if you can’t find a way to let it go yourself, you use it to attack others.

I should know. My abusive ex openly admitted that the reason why he wasn’t in love with me and couldn’t ever fall in love with me is because he saw too much of what he hated in himself in me. And one of the most abusive things he did was to tell me to stop doing things, to get over other things, to change. He would tell me I was emotionally screwed up, that I had mental problems. That I needed to be fixed. And the way in which he “fixed” me was to tell me how to feel, advise me how to act, then take advantage of me and tell me he did it as a “favor” so I’d “get over myself.”

Recovering from him has helped me see it clearly in other people, the way in which others will manipulate and call it “advice”. Those who have lost weight and managed to keep it off are no better than anyone else, and they know it. Usually the means by which a person loses and keeps it off involves living a regimented life where your physical activity and diet is either controlled by someone else, or yourself. You become a slave to your metabolism. Those who “keep the weight off” do so by becoming far more obsessed with food then they were before. The sort of prescribed lifestyle for the recovering obese is one in which we are literally enslaved to society’s ideal.

I’ve seen that sort of “ideal lifestyle” and it was like a prison.

By asking his cohost what she weighed, and then criticizing her and calling her obsessed for not revealing it, Roker revealed that he is the one imprisoned, not her. He no longer has control over his body. He has surrendered it to the social pressure to be thin, and in doing so, he completely undermined the story he was supposedly reporting on: A bulimic reaching another mile stone in freeing herself from THE SOCIAL PRESSURE TO BE THIN!

It’s not ironic. It’s too hideous and disgusting, when picked apart, to be ironic. It’s not that anybody “should” know better… it’s that this situation, when looked at with a critical eye reveals just how much people don’t KNOW about their own issues with food.

Freedom from fat is not the act of losing weight. Freedom from fat is living a life that is no longer dictated by food that has an emotional appeal, by food that has to be broken down into nutritional components and analysed, by counting the calories in food so you know how much extra steps to take during the day. Freedom from fat is freedom from thinking about f*cking food!

It’s food. Eat it. When you are done, go about your business.

Jezebel seems to be having a “fat is fabulous” themed day up in its parts. My FB wall has given me “How to lose weight in 89 easy steps” and “Strong Is NOT the new skinny.”